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Yesterday, I spent the day in Magdalena and Socorro. I had used up most of my hours this week at Magdalena, so I hung out there in the morning. After that, I left and went back to Socorro and worked at NMT.

First, I spent some time working on a toy steam engine that we may use as a prototype for the chemical engineering car this upcoming year. I put a half of a cube of fuel in place, and in ten minutes, I had a steam engine turning a fly wheel at probably 800-1200 RPM (estimating by eye). It was really neat! After another ten minutes or so, the engine slowed and eventually stopped. The test was a success.

In the afternoon, I attended an information session for another tutoring opportunity. I am not yet hired, and I may not have hours this semester anyhow, but it was good to learn about this opportunity.

Yesterday, I spent the day in Socorro again. I have almost completely moved out of Speare, and will finish that up today. However, yesterday I had a bunch of meetings, so I went to those instead of finishing up.

The meetings were all good. First, we talked about renovations to Jones, and, if they all go through, perhaps it won’t be so bad to move there. After that, I met with one of the other professors about several smaller projects, including manufacturing a mold and firing up an old toy steam engine.

I also attended a LabVIEW webinar and reviewed some code for our dynamo project.

In the evening, I came home to an empty house, as Joey and JoAnna were at a Landmark event. I did some free writing and went to bed a little early.

Yesterday, I spent the morning moving more equipment around the NMT campus. As I moved a cart full of small fittings, the bottom box spit, dumping the top boxes of fittings, leaving hundreds of fittings, washers, barbs, screws and nuts all over the sidewalk.

I lost it. A couple was walking into the building when this happened, on their way to watch their daughter’s defense. They laughed when the boxes fell. I informed them that this is what a master’s degree from NMT gets, and that if they had any sense, they would not waste their time at college.

I started to walk off the job. I took off my work gloves, kicked one of the boxes, and started walking back to my office to gather my belongings. This is bullshit, and I’m done with it. I intentionally took a nap under a tree and wasted an hour of tax payer money. Compared to the time and money wasted by academia, this was a drop in the bucket. You can even think of it as an investment, as it prevented me from flipping out on the next ten people I saw.

I need to start drinking or doing drugs instead of wasting my life working for a shitty, inbred university.

Yesterday, I commuted to Socorro and took care of a few things there. Mostly, I spent my time updating the computers and cleaning up the computers in MSEC 259. I updated Windows 7, ran a virus checker, defragged the disk, removed last semester’s classwork and so on from all of the machines. I did not meet with all of the people whom I needed to meet, but that’s okay. Pretty soon, I’ll be back down there full time and can catch up on that.

In the evening, I “armchair” chased the storms in Virginia, checking the RADAR frequently and getting updates from my friends and family over Facebook, Twitter and text.

Overall, it was an uneventful, yet productive day.

Thank you for reading my post. Hopefully, I’ll post some running stuff and perhaps a monthly activity summary in the next day or so.

Yesterday, I commuted to Socorro to catch up on a few things around the lab. Most importantly, I left a flash drive with some important information on it, so I was able to retrieve that. I also met with the ultrasound team to see where they were in the project. They have made some good progress, so I was pleased to see that. I also did some cleaning around my office, as it was quite disorganized in the end-of-the-semester rush.

In the evening, I did a little cooking, as we have been out of town for several weeks, and were completely out of dinner material.

Yesterday, I did some more lab cleanup. My computer lab is almost completely clear, thanks to a few helpful students who bothered to clean up after themselves. I also finished my grading for the semester, thus ending my formal responsibilities for the school year.

In the late morning and early afternoon, I turored my last day of the semester at Magdalena. I will miss working there over the summer, and I don’t know what their budget will look like in the fall, though I am 99% sure I will return in August.

In the evening, I returned home. I did some work for UpWork along the way, editing for about an hour. I need to figure out aa plan to get all of my vehicles home, and with storm chasing approaching, I wanted to spend a little more time with my family.

Yesterday, I spent the morning taking care of a few things on the NMT campus before heading over to Magdalena for the day. I tutored until 3:00, and then I headed back to NMT for a department meeting that we had at El Camino, as it was our final one of the semester.

On my way home, I checked into my home computer remotely and did some editing work for UpWork and some LabVIEW work for a physics project that I am involved with as well. It worked out pretty well, so I will continue to do this when I am commuting.

It is interesting the way our economy works today. When I was growing up, a “good job” meant working for the same company from the time you left your education until you retired. Those type of jobs no longer exist, for the most part. Instead, we live in the “Gig-Economy” where we bounce from one gig to the next. In a lot of ways, it is less secure, but in other ways, it provides a freedom not seen by other generations of workers. It also prevents stagnation, as one must constantly seek new skills and new employment opportunities.